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Problems of Adjustment in Nation Building: The Maritime Provinces and Tasmania
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
It is the purpose of this paper to consider some of the problems which have confronted the inhabitants of Tasmania and the Canadian Maritime Provinces in fitting themselves, individually and corporately, into the Australian and Canadian federations.
If the move to federate be regarded as a leap in the dark, then the majority of the Tasmanians of the late 1890's would have to confess that they jumped, while their Maritime counterparts of the 1860's could claim, with some justice, that they were pushed. In the referenda held on the proposed federal constitution prior to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia, Tasmania shared with Victoria the honour of being the colony recording the highest percentage of affirmative votes. No such popular endorsement was sought for the terms of union embodied in the British North America Act. Tilley's defeat in the 1865 New Brunswick election, which was fought on the issue of federation, and the success of the “Repeal” advocates in the 1867 federal and provincial general elections in Nova Scotia, were indicative of the popular disapproval with which the proposals for federation were regarded in these two provinces which became charter members of the Dominion; while the special circumstances surrounding the belated entry of Prince Edward Island into Confederation were indicative of the attitude of the Islanders to the movement. The cause of federation in the Maritimes, unlike that in Tasmania, required tangible external “encouragement”–from the Colonial Office and from Canada–to assure its success.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 27 - 43
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1954
References
1 This article is adapted from a paper read before Section E (History) at the twenty-ninth meeting of the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in Sydney, August, 1952. It was written while the author was on the faculty of the Australian National University, Canberra.
2 The results of the referenda:
The 1899 referendum was rendered necessary by some minor amendments being made in the proposed constitution with the object of making it attractive to the inhabitants of New South Wales. Since the enabling act of that colony stipulated that an affirmative vote of at least eighty thousand was required to commit the colony to federation, the proposal was in effect defeated in 1898. A referendum was not held in Western Australia until 1900. See MacKirdy, K. A., “Conflict of Loyalties,” Canadian Historical Review, XXXII, 12, 1951, 344.Google Scholar
3 See Bailey, A. G., “The Basis and Persistence of Opposition to Confederation in New Brunswick,” Canadian Historical Review, XXIII, 03, 1942, 374–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harvey, D. C., “Confederation in Prince Edward Island,” Canadian Historical Review, XIV, 06, 1933, 143–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 This theme is more fully developed in MacKirdy, K. A., “Geography and Federalism in Australia and Canada,” Australian Geographer, VI, 03, 1953.Google Scholar
5 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, s. 24.
6 Under section 24 of the Constitution the membership of the House of Representatives was to be “as nearly as practicable” double the membership of the Senate. The first Commonwealth Parliament had a Senate of 36 (six senators from each of six states) and a House of Representatives with 75 members. The Representation Act of 1948 increased the size of the Senate to 60 (ten from each state) with a House of 121. Tasmania's population was such that following the redistribution that state still was allotted the minimum of five members.
7 Hopkins, J. Castell, The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs (Toronto, 1909), 424.Google Scholar
8 Between 1901 and 1945 Tasmania had a net loss from emigration of 63,274 persons. Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1951, 540.Google Scholar
9 The settlement was established in 1833 and abandoned in 1878. The buildings were later gutted by bush fires.
10 Possibly the case was best stated in Tasmania by the Colonial Statistician, Johnson, R. M., in Federal Finance: Observations on the Difficulties of the Problem with an Enquiry into Their Underlying Causes (Hobart, 1897).Google Scholar
11 In 1897, £351,848 or 70.87 per cent of Tasmania's total taxation revenue of £486,472 was derived from customs: Walch's Tasmanian Almanac, 1899 (Hobart, 1899), 267.Google Scholar In 1886, New Brunswick's tax revenue of $1,037,000 was derived entirely from customs as was $1,226,000 of Nova Scotia's total of $1,232,000 and $166,000 of Prince Edward Island's $181,000: Creighton, D. G., British North America at Confederation (Ottawa, 1939), 72.Google Scholar
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16 The Tasmanian treasury experienced a smaller loss from the change than did that of any other state. The following figures show1 the payments made during the last year of the “book-keeping system” and the first year of the subsidy.
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17 Under section 93 of the Constitution provision was made to divide the states' share of the customs and excise revenue proportionally to the individual state's contribution to this fund by tracing-all goods paying customs or excise to their point of ultimate consumption.
18 Select Committee of House of Representatives appointed August 11, 1910. Committee lapsed at prorogation of Parliament. Reconstituted as a Royal Commission, December 30, 1910. Report submitted September 23, 1911. For report and minutes of evidence see Australia, Parliamentary Papers, 1911, 23.Google Scholar
19 The Commission's recommendation, which was implemented by Parliament, called for a payment of £900,000 to Tasmania spread over a ten-year period.
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23 The “Tasmania: What Is Wrong with Her?” series running in the Mercury during the Lockyer investigation, February, 1926, provides a good example of this technique with the later modification of introducing a tone of dissatisfaction with federation into the press during the actual period of investigation.
24 Examiner, 04 24, 1925, 5.Google Scholar
25 Tasmania, Report of Committee Appointed to Inquire into Tasmanian Disabilities under Federation (Hobart, 1925).Google Scholar The committee was composed of a former state premier, a former speaker of the state House of Assembly, a former agent-general, the professor of economics of the state university, the government statistician, and the under-treasurer.
26 The secretary of the Dominion League was also secretary of the Economic Case for Tasmania Committee. The other members of the official committee were also associated with the Dominion League.
27 The evolution of the system can be traced in the first three volumes of Australia, Commonwealth Grants Commission, Reports (Canberra), 1933, 1934-5, and 1936.Google Scholar
28 All phases of nineteenth-century Tasmanian maritime enterprise are surveyed in Norman, L., Pioneer Shipping of Tasmania (Hobart, 1938).Google Scholar
29 Mercury, 12 12, 1921, 6.Google Scholar
30 The Trans-Australian Railway,” Mercury, 06 27, 1910, 4 Google Scholar; “Super Optimists,” Examiner, 08 13, 1934, 6 Google Scholar–an adverse comment on a proposal to establish a national university at Canberra.
31 “The Transcontinental Railway Sleepers: How Tasmania Was Treated,” Examiner, 05 10, 1913, 8.Google Scholar
32 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, s. 125.
33 Letters to Editor, Mercury, A. Wolliscroft, April SO, 1898; Wm. Crooke, May 11, 1898. “Nova Scotian,” Confederation Considered on Its Merits, Being an Examination into the Principle, Capabilities, and Terms of Union (Halifax, 1867), passim.Google Scholar
34 Tasmanian complaints re competition from mainland travellers and “those silent and even more powerful representatives, the illustrated catalogues” were voiced at a Launceston protest meeting held in connection with the claim for customs' leakage compensation, Examiner, 08 4, 1910, 7.Google Scholar Similar complaints appear in a paper prepared over the signature of Sir Elliott Lewis for the premiers' conference of that year, ibid., June 4, 1910, 9.
H. G. Haliburton provides contemporary comment on the lack of enterprise of Halifax merchants at the time of federation in Intercolonial Trade Our Only Safeguard against Disunion (Ottawa, 1866), 6.Google Scholar
35 Milner, W. C., “The Maritime Provinces in 1924,” Canadian Annual Review, 1924–1925, 333.Google Scholar
36 The Commercial Bank of Tasmania, established in 1832 with its head office at Hobart, was absorbed by the English, Scottish and Australian Bank in 1921. The National Bank of Tasmania, head office Launceston, established 1835, was taken over by the Commercial Bank of Australia in 1918. Neither of these Tasmanian banks had branches outside the state.
37 On June 30, 1949, £14,051,000 was on deposit with the two Tasmanian trustee savings banks while £8,362,000 was on deposit with the Commonwealth Savings Bank in Tasmania. Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1951, 729, 731.Google Scholar
38 On the reluctance of the directors of a Maritime bank to agree to its amalgamation with the “western” institution see Ross, V., A History of the Canadian Bank of Commerce (Toronto, 1920), I, 118–21.Google Scholar
39 “A State in Chancery,” Mercury, 02 18, 1926, 7.Google Scholar
40 Average annual earnings of wage earners:
Canada Year Book, 1925, 428 Google Scholar; 1951, 609. A high proportion of female wage earners and greater seasonability of employment provide partial explanations for the excessively low Prince Edward Island figure for 1923.
41 For a summary of the Tasmanian case see Black, C. B., History of the Australian Navigation Act (Hobart, 1932).Google Scholar
42 Between 1920 and 1928 twelve shipping and wharf labour-strikes with a total loss of 8,622 man-working days were reported in the state. Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Labour Reports, 1920–1928.Google Scholar
43 T. Murdoch with the Hobart Chamber of Commerce submission, in Australia, Royal Commission on the Constitution, Minutes of Evidence (Canberra, 1929), 858.Google Scholar
44 Average weekly wage of an adult male worker:
Australia Bureau of Census and Statistics, Labour Reports, 1925, 77 Google Scholar; 1947, 64. Cf. n. 40.
45 In 1922 the difference was claimed to be 3d. a pound. “The Sugar Incubus,” Examiner, 05 22, 1922, 4.Google Scholar
46 “Sugar and the Fruitgrower,” Examiner, 12 7, 1921, 6.Google Scholar During November, 1930, a series, inserted at advertising rates, entitled “The Truth about the Queensland Sugar Industry,” giving the Queensland sugar producers' case, appeared in the Examiner.
47 Averaging the 1934-5 to 1938-9 crops, the Tasmanian local market absorbed 7 per cent of the island's production, the mainland 32 per cent, and the remaining 61 per cent was exported overseas, chiefly to Britain. Walker, E. R., The Tasmanian Economy in 1939-40 (Hobart, 1940), 26.Google Scholar
48 For a Tasmanian threat to place a quarantine embargo on Victorian flour in retaliation for Victorian action against Tasmanian potatoes see Melbourne, Argus, 02 26, 1935, 3 Google Scholar; March 2, 1935, 22.
49 It had operated on an experimental scale since 1916.
50 “The Melbourne Cup,” Brisbane Courier, 11 4, 1903, 4.Google Scholar Similar testimony from another generally anti-federal source was provided by the lead editorial, Perth, West Australian, 11 8, 1906, 6.Google Scholar
51 Dean, E. P., “How Canada Has Voted,” Canadian Historical Review, XXX, 1949, 229.Google Scholar
52 Only one independent and two supporters of the then states' rightist Country party have been elected to the House of Representatives from Tasmania. All three of these successful candidates were favoured by peculiar circumstances.
53 “All we know is he clung to office. He put office first, or Mr. Hughes first, or Australia first. He did not put Tasmania first.” Editorial, Mercury, Nov. 21, 1922. In the results Smith trailed his Nationalist colleague, but the Labour candidate won.